LG Shine

Editor's Review of the Shine

Also called KE970, the LG Shine is sleek and highly capable and is second in LG's Black Label design series. It shares similar characteristics with the LG KG800 Chocolate, which is famed for its imaging-oriented features.

The LG Shine is known for being extremely slim, light, and easy to operate and hold. It bears the measurements of 98 x 51 x 14 millimetres and weight of 115 grams including a fitted battery. The mobile phone appears attractive with its stainless steel casing that effectuates a mirror-like shine. The LG Shine has a TFT screen that measures 55.88 millimetres and offers a 240 x 320-pixel resolution. The large screen offers 256,000 colours, making its picture wallpapers, theme displays and screensaver real stand-outs. The LG Shine also supports quality sound with its MP3 and polyphonic ringtones that users may opt to use to give their phones the precise personality. Adding to its stylish look is its tactile slide mechanism.

The LG Shine's TFT screen welcomes users with an actual mirror. Right under its screen is a roll bar navigator which serves as a tool for users to easily scroll through the various menus of the handset. With its slide opened, the LG Shine welcomes users with a keypad that is etched onto the handset's surface, which has keys that are highlighted by a bluish backlight.

The LG Shine operates on GSM 900, GSM 1800 and GSM 1900 as it works on triband technology. The handset is powered to automatically switch to better network bands. Exploring the online world is also possible with the LG Shine. Users can utilize the handset's XTHML WAP browser to get connected to the Web. For the transfer of files and data, the LG Shine offers USB support and Bluetooth for wireless connectivity. The handset is powered by the advanced GPRS system, which makes file transfers a sure breeze.

The LG Shine can also serve as a reliable organising assistant to its busy users. The mobile phone's business-oriented facet is characterised by a pre-installed calendar, calculator, alarm clock, stopwatch, timer and notes. For alert purposes, the LG Shine also comes with a vibration option.

Users of the LG Shine are able to easily access the handset's messaging services from its main menu. The messaging services consist of text messaging, enhanced messaging and multimedia messaging, which are supported by predictive text. The handset also has an email client support, through which users can receive and send emails even when they are on the go.

The LG Shine flaunts top quality imaging with a 2-Megapixel camera. The integrated camera comes with flash to eliminate lighting problems, and an auto-focus feature to help users capture their subjects perfectly. In addition, the digital camera comes with a 2x zoom for clearer snapshots. To aid users in getting the just the right photo outputs, the LG Shine has photo settings for those necessary tweaks.

The camera doesn't settle for mere photo shoots, as it also allows video recording and playback. As some videos may need to be enhanced to get quality footages, the LG Shine has video settings through which necessary adjustments can be made. The LG Shine users can save and store their photos and video footages in the handset's photo album and video gallery.

In addition, the mobile phone has a built-in music player that offers a good listening experience. The music player supports practically every sound format such as MP3, and offers high quality audio. Users are able to download favourite tracks on the mobile phone and listen to the tunes using the speakers, or through the LG headphones. When using the LG Shine, users are able to spend leisure hours by playing embedded Java games on the handset. Downloading other games onto the handset is also supported by the mobile phone.

The LG Shine is armed with a large memory of 1 Gigabyte for the storage of contacts, photos and videos. Users can enjoy their LG Shine for 3 hours of talk time. The mobile phone also offers 280 hours of standby, when it is operated on full mode.

Users and observers attest that the LG Shine comes with definite functionalities that are highly usable and easy-to-operate. However, some people criticize the LG Shine's speakers, because they reportedly emit very low sound, thus limiting LG Shine users' enjoyment of its music player. Another minor problem with the handset, according to users, is attributed to its integrated camera, which takes a little while to take photos, and result to poor resolution of the shots.